News briefs

Local and VCU

McDonnell leads GOP sweep of statewide races

Bob McDonnell led a Republican sweep of Virginia’s statewide races Tuesday, restoring the GOP to power after eight years out of the governor’s office.

The double-digit victories by McDonnell, Lt. Gov. Bill Bolling and Ken Cuccinelli, the party’s nominee for attorney general, reversed a recent string of defeats for Republicans, who lost races for the U.S. Senate in 2006 and 2008 and the presidential election in Virginia in 2008 for the first time in 44 years.

The coattails of the statewide candidates also resulted in net GOP gains in the House of Delegates of at least three seats and possibly as many as six.

Republicans also won the governor’s race in New Jersey, another rebuff to President Barack Obama and Gov. Timothy M. Kaine, the president’s hand-picked chairman of the Democratic National Committee.

Brief by the Richmond Times-Dispatch

Details surface on murder weapons in Farmville slayings

Two weapons, a ball-peen hammer and a wood-splitting maul, were used to bludgeon four people found dead inside a Longwood University professor’s home in September, a source close to the investigation confirmed Tuesday.

Also Tuesday, Richard Samuel Alden McCroskey III, 20, of Castro Valley, Calif., was served with indictments on six counts of capital murder in the bludgeoning deaths of Professor Debra S. Kelley, 53; her estranged husband, Mark Niederbrock, 50; their daughter, Emma Niederbrock, 16; and Melanie Wells, 18, Emma’s friend from Inwood, W.Va.

All four were discovered dead Sept. 18 in Kelley’s Farmville home.

Brief by the Richmond Times-Dispatch

Police impersonator case on hold Henrico County’s chief prosector agreed Wednesday morning to reconsider a case against a man found guilty in August of impersonating a police officer and attempted abduction.

Commonwealth’s Attorney Wade Kizer said after a closed hearing in a judge’s chamber that he might seek to alter convictions against Shay Cameron Mann.

Retired Circuit Judge James E. Kulp ordered that a sentencing hearing be continued until Nov. 24 to give Kizer and Mann’s defense lawyer time to explore whether there is a process by which Mann’s convictions can be amended.

Mann, 31, of the 6800 block of Carnegie Drive in Henrico, was found guilty of four separate offenses tied to his encounter in February with a woman whom he allegedly pulled over with blinking police lights; he then displayed a firearm and ordered the woman into his car, according to her testimony.

Brief by the Richmond Times-Dispatch

National and International

ISM’s service sector index grows again in October

The U.S. service sector grew for a second straight month in October, but at a slower pace than in September, as a broad economic recovery creeps along.

The Institute for Supply Management said Wednesday that its service index dipped to 50.6 last month from 50.9. Any reading above 50 signals growth. Analysts polled by Thomson Reuters had expected a 51.5 for the index that tracks the country’s hospitals, retailers, financial services companies and truckers.

But new orders, an augur of future activity, rose to 55.6, from 54.2 in September. Business activity also rose.

Still, the decline in employment worsened. The employment tracker has contracted for 21 of the past 22 months.

In the ISM’s survey, nine industries said their businesses grew last month, with real estate, construction, corporate management and support services showing the biggest gains. Seven sectors contracted.

The index tracks more than 80 percent of the country’s economic activity.

Brief by The Associated Press

Strike-crowded Philly commuter train

catches fire

A Philadelphia commuter train caught fire Wednesday, complicating the morning rush already hampered by the city’s transit strike. Officials said no injuries were reported.

The cause of the blaze was unknown, but it was possibly an electrical fire, said Richard Maloney, a spokesman for Southeastern Pennsylvania Transportation Authority. He did not elaborate.

Flames could be seen shooting from the front of the SEPTA regional train shortly after 7 a.m. Wednesday. A big cloud of smoke also billowed from the train, which was heading east from the Overbrook station in West Philadelphia toward the Amtrak station in Center City.

Brief by The Associated Press

Italian judge convicts 23 in CIA kidnapping case

An Italian judge on Wednesday convicted 23 Americans in absentia of the 2003 kidnapping of an Egyptian cleric from a Milan street, in a case involving the CIA’s extraordinary rendition program in the War on Terrorism.

Citing diplomatic immunity, Judge Oscar Magi told the Milan courtroom he was acquitting three other Americans.

Former Milan CIA Station Chief, Robert Seldon Lady, received eight years in prison. The other 22 convicted American defendants each received a five-year sentence.

The Americans, all but one identified by prosecutors as CIA agents, were tried in absentia as subsequent Italian governments refused or ignored prosecutors’ extradition requests.

In Washington, CIA Spokesman George Little said, “The CIA has not commented on any of the allegations surrounding Abu Omar,” the kidnapped man.

Brief by The Associated Press